Head of the Iranian Nuclear Agency: I Misled Foreign Intelligence

Iran’s Vice President Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, who heads the Iranian delegation taking part in the 56th session of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, told the newspaper Al-Hayat: “We sometimes gave false information to protect our nuclear sites and our interests. This inevitably misled other intelligence agencies.”

It appears that Iran has been regularly giving false information to the IAEA, assuming that it had been infiltrated by intelligence agencies interested in Iran’s nuclear program.

“The IAEA says it gets its information from the intelligence services belonging to the member states, and we monitor and followed up seven years ago activities of the British foreign intelligence service, which gathered information for people, which then exposed [Iranian nuclear scientists] to assassination at the hands of Zionist intelligence agents. Some of the information provided by the agency related to these events. For our part, we sometimes gave false information to protect our nuclear sites and our interests. This inevitably misled other intelligence agencies,” Davani told Al-Hayat.

Shaul Chorev, director of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, announced that Israel would not attend a conference on the creation of a nuclear-free Middle East which will take place in Finland. AFP reports that the conference is scheduled for later this year or early in 2013, and it is backed by the U.S.

Chorev told the IAEA meeting in Vienna that a nuclear-free Middle East “will be possible only after the establishment of peace and trust among the states of the area, as a result of a local initiative, not of external coercion.”

“Such a process can only be launched when peaceful relations exist for a reasonable period of time in the region,” Chorev said. “Regrettably, the realities in the Middle East are far from being conducive.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization chief Fereydoun Abbasi says he has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to provide Iran with information about Israel’s nuclear installations, the Tehran Times reported.

“I told [IAEA director Yukiya] Amano to allow (Iran) to defend its achievements on an equal footing (with Israel) in view of the situation in the region and the danger that exists for Iran,” Fereydoun Abbasi told reporters after a meeting with the IAEA director in Vienna on Monday.